But the media, so quick to report on a scrap that CBS reporter Allen Pizzey argued “challenges the very foundation of Christian thinking,” weren’t so eager to report on the mounting evidence that the scrap of papyrus was a forgery.

The broadcast networks trumpeted the existence and import of the papyrus with breathless excitement. ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas even went so far as to proclaim: “Real-life Da Vinci Code. Christianity's biggest mysteries about to be solved. The tiny scrap of paper that could prove Jesus had a wife. Why this faded fragment might solve an age-old question.” Needless to say, the networks offered no correction to their story after doubts were raised about the authenticity of the artifact.

Harvard professor Karen King, who initially translated the text on the papyrus and dubbed it “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” has an agenda of discrediting orthodox Christianity. The Smithsonian Magazine noted: “Her scholarship has been a kind of sustained critique of what she calls the “master story” of Christianity: a narrative that casts the canonical texts of the New Testament as divine revelation that passed through Jesus in “an unbroken chain” to the apostles and their successors—church fathers, ministers, priests and bishops who carried these truths into the present day.”

Not every media outlet lined up to trumpet the papyrus as, well, gospel. The Associated Press’s Nicole Winfield, for one, published an excellent piece noting problems with the authenticity of the papyrus scrap on September 19. But for most outlets, the opportunity to take a gratuitous shot at Christian beliefs apparently overrode caution or inconvenient truths.

Perhaps journalists should be more careful about hyping a dubious discovery that “challenges the very foundation of Christianity.” But that requires a willingness to critically examine anything which discredits Christianity.